Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards.

Isolation, you know, carries the seeds of its own destruction because as times change, other things seep in.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams.

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative - no author does, I can tell you - you could nevertheless create it.

No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.

He wants to put his story next to hers.